MC-80 Replace HDD with CF Card

[bbrich]

Hi. Has anybody out there ever successfully replaced the internal HDD in a Roland MC-80? My HDD has finally died. It had been noisy for a few years so when it was still working I backed up the whole disk to the Desktop on my MacBook Pro - so I haven't lost my files. I bought a Dual CF Card Adapter and fitted it into the hard drive caddie. That didn't work. The MC-80 didn't recognize it at all. Then I read somewhere that the CF Adapter needs to be connected directly to the interface board, bypassing the caddie and its connector completely. I tried that as well. Still didn't work. Since then I've started to think that it may be the CF Cards themselves. Somebody else suggested that the CF Cards have to be 'Industrial" grade. On and off I've been messing with this for about three years. Has anybody got any positive input? Has anybody actually made it work?

I also installed a Gotek USB Floppy Disk drive. It works perfectly. I can format a USB stick as multiple floppies (FLOPPY0, FLOPPY1, etc) and I can see each floppy in the Drive Window. The Floppies are selected by a push-button on the front of the Gotek. Each time you press the button the MC-80 responds as though you'd inserted an individual floppy disk. However, what I haven't worked out is how to copy the files off my MacBook Pro onto the multiple floppy USB Stick. The Mac only recognizes Floppy0. I can work around it by using a single USB stick as a single 1.4Mb Floppy Disk but then my hundreds of MIDI files would be spread across tens of USB sticks. Messy. I really need an internal hard drive solution.